The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
In conventional database systems, users access their data resources in one logical database. A user of such a conventional system typically retrieves data from and stores data on the system using the user's own systems. A user system might remotely access one of a plurality of server systems that might in turn access the database system. Data retrieval from the system might include the user sending a query to the database system. The database system might process the request for information received in the query and send to the user system information relevant to the request. The secure efficient retrieval of accurate information and subsequent delivery of this information to the user system has been and continues to be a goal of administrators of database systems.
Database information is accessed through software running on application servers. The software running on application servers is tested before being run in production. The performance of the software is interpreted based on metrics collected during testing. Typically, the metrics used to determine the performance of this software is heavily reliant on the platform and the state of the environment in which the application server and database run, which may include factors such as the hardware the application server and database are running on, other processes simultaneously on the same hardware, the client system accessing the database, and the combination of tasks being performed on the application server and database, for example. The dependence of the state of the environment and platform has made it difficult to get reliable performance data on software running over a variety of hardware platforms. Along with traditional performance metrics, a variety of additional metrics are collected on the running software, that are not used to derive performance data.